The customer Is NOT Always Right!

[Jim Warfield]

Tonight the doorbell went off , my wife goes to the ticket window.
There was a man and several young boys outside.
"Tell you what, I have a deal for you, $50.oo and we all go in."
"That's not a deal for us."
"I was here 3 months ago and I only paid $5.oo a person to get in."
("Now he's just lied to me." Jessica thought)
He kept on being this stupid even after he pulled his all-powerfull $50.oo bill from his wad of money.
Our ticket window takes up very little space from inside of the house so I was standing aways away hearing his fruitless inane banter.
"I can't do this at the gas station when I buy gas." Jessica said.
"Now Jim was making loud fart sounds . "She added.
(This was to let Jessica know I wasn't interested in doing a deeply discounted tour and really , the kind of a person he sounded like, I didn't want him in the house for the next 90 minutes either.
Many years ago, being very desperate for business I would sometimes submit myself to such people and once inside my house most of them made my life miserable and alot of extra work. It's that whole attitude-thing.
He even went so far as to plead, saying it was 2 or 3 of the kid's Birthdays(He's already lied once , remember.)
I like the fact that all those kids were standing very close to him to hear both halves of the conversation so then the kids know why they didn't get a tour, your Dad is a professional cheapskate and an amateur idiot.
I "love" it in October when this style of idiot shows up with his "deals". I politely ask him to please step aside, then I lie and tell them I'll talk to them "later", later when I don't have a parking lot full of customers willing to pay full admission and not carp about it.
I guess he was just putting on a show for his kids?
That was the only show he got here tonight.
Do you other guys see this guy darken your ticket window on a busy night in October?

[Jim Warfield]

"Mr. Dourody, I've noticed that your prices are higher than the other stores in town, why is that?"
"Yes, Madame, we do that intentionally to keep the "Riff-Raff" out!"
(My old employer in the grocery business gave this reply to a woman who asked him that question)
Lower your haunt admission and see the number of drunken and vandalistic customers increase mathematiacally. That is what happens, yup!

[JamBam]

Jim do the math

Hey Warfield,
A man and several lads!
The math I learned has four times 12 at $ 48. He was offering you a two dollar tip! lol


P.S.
And it is only 308 miles from the 2009 TW to the Ravens Grin Inn. If you get a fast bus driver instead of that 90 year old from years ago, it would take less time to do. I am up to my fourth tour of the INN !!!!

[damon carson]

Been there done that JIM! Way to send them down the road. Some people. "I have a deal for you." Get real!
Damon

[Jim Warfield]

the total head count for Mr. cheap-o was actually 10, so it was a $5.00 tour he wanted.
I'd like some 35cents a gallon gasoline too! Just like 1967 again!

[Greg Chrise]

I've noticed that the parking lot at the grocery store is now always jam packed. As the prices have edged up, now people are coming much more often to spend smaller sums of money each time rather than going on a shopping spree and filling the shelves.

The grocery store is having more wear and tear, has to have more people at the registers to handle an even lower amount of money. Of course I don't feel sorry for them at all.

The customers with their own little extra baggage would normally have carts full to over flowing and now all these carts are only 1/3rd full. The lines move quicker but there are more in line. Some cosmic formula.

2 years ago, I had two kids come from their mothers car. They were probably 16ish. They asked how much it was. They were told $10 and came back with $2 each. Misheard. They actually had no more than that. I still had to turn them away but, always wondered if I had been a real nice guy and let them in with another group what the reprocushions would have been. Or how much giving them a break really would have been appreciated.

Unfortunately it spreads to become expected rather than something special.

[Jim Warfield]

I hope nobody gets me wrong with this post. I have had SO
many wonderfully nice , fun, smart customers here that maybe it spoils me and I begin thinking that everyone is smart enough and good enough not to be somehow a stupid or nasty person to have to deal with. This is what I really like and appreciate about returning customers who already know or have a very good concept of what goes on here and the value that it is to the majority .
I like no arguements.
They waste time and energy.
After running this house, having it open for tours almost every night of the year for 20 years I like to feel I have proved what a tour here is worth to the customer as measured in dollars and cents.
Since this haunt is so different and "eunuch"(A Frenchman once said I was "Eunuch" "I didn't know that my pants were that tight that you could tell!") I have always also felt confident that the house and tour is different enough that it stands pretty much alone within the minds of those past customers(it does effect some of their dreams)

[shawnc]

Greg,
Something I have done is to give a few tickets to teachers in local schools with the understanding that they would be given to a few of the kids who came from very poor families. I always do the same thing with my photography business, whether it's for a Little League team, senior portraits or class photos. I know there are lots of kids out there who would do without otherwise and it doesn't really cost me that much.

Even beyond the poor families are the ones where the kids are neglected because the parents are alcoholics or on drugs, or just don't care enough about their kids to pay attention to what is happening in their lives. I would encourage everyone else to do the same. I guarantee you will feel good about it.

[JamBam]

ten!

Now I see your math is correct, Jim. When I ran the corn maze, it amazed me as to the number of kids who would come up to the concession stand and ask if the products on display were FREE!!!

And we gave all school tour kids a free maze ticket to get them to bring the family back. I had two families in a row one day try to use the tickets collected on the bus ride home for their entire families. The first guy got mad and left when I showed him the ticket printing that said under age 12 only. And he had five kids and tickets for them, himself, and his wife. His cost was going to be $ 12 for the two adults and he was getting the kids in free. But he showed his kids what a jerk he was and left.

Then the next family was a woman and four kids. I explained it to her and she begrudgingly paid for her and her friend. And the kids got in free. And I know that the kids she had with her were different ages and all hers, so they all hadn't come with their schools for a tour.

I usually told them the unfortunately the farmer wanted his rent, the newspapers charged for advertising and they didn't work for free either.

[Jim Warfield]

People ARE Amazing!

They walk up to my house,it's covered in vines it's an 1880 Italianate two-story house with a cupola on top, there is a 14 foot tall steel-welded skull at the north corner of the house and a big Marc Cline skeleton hand reaching up and out of the vines and bushes, there is a 1950 Hudson Police car coming out of the second story, there is another one nosed down at the first story level, there is a 1950 Hudson taxi cab ramming into the house beside the front door, there is a pteradacytl skeleton on the sounth side of the house , there is a 40 foot high steeple at the back of the house...and after looking at all of this they have asked me, "Is there a charge to see the inside of the house?"
I'd like to say loudly :"Well kick me in the azz and call me stupid, I never thought of charging admission before! ??? Maybe if some of you paid admission I could quit my job at the Foot-licking Emporium next to the shoe store?"

One time I heard people outside the house , I opened my ticket window and there were about 10 people all leaning and pushing against the front door trying to make it open!? (There were kids, grandma, parents, everybody)
"We want to come in your house!"
"$$$$?"
"?"
What!? We were told it was FREE!"
"Where do you all get your grocerys? I have to pay for mine, if you get yours free, bring me some , OK?"
They never got in.
If I still had had the old, original flimsey front door they would have gotten in and then just let me try to evict them!
One summer afternoon I was taking a nap when I thought I heard voices inside the house.
I walked into the front room and there was a Father, Wife, kids, all looking around like the Snoop Sisters. They had just pushed the old door open and walked in like it was their god-given right.
So many times I day-dreamed how much fun it could be to follow such people home and return the stupidity. (Especially when I kick them out for urinating on the floor.)

[Haunting Copy]

Y'all try to be careful how you go about giving out the freebies.
While it's a wonderful thing to offer, it can be so easily undermined.

Once when I gave *thousands* of dollars worth of toys, children's
clothes, and women's clothes to the local shelter for battered
women, I caught red-handed the employee stuffing the things I
had donated into the trunk of her car.

I reported her to the director of the shelter, who simply shrugged.

Sarah

[Jim Warfield]

A nice man I know decided to give away free turkeys to some locals who were down on their luck, poor, whatever, he walked up to the porch of their run-down house and the enclosed porch was packed high and tight with empty beer cans!
The couple drank at least two cases of beer everyday.
Ignored their kids.
Just "existed".
The drunken Father said, "What do you want!?"
The generous turkey-deliverer told him, he said, "Put it there somewhere!" Next to the 1,000 empty beer cans.....
He felt like he was possibly the world's biggest sucker.

The son of these people told me how he only ever got one toy for Christmas.
A Fisher-Price waddling, squaking duck you pulled around with a string, made out of wood.
The toy would dissappear every summer , the Dad would slop some paint on it, wrap it up and give it to him again for Christmas!
(Of course the orginal finish was printed paper glued over the wood, so paint ruined this)
He told me, "I got So Dam Sick of getting that Duck every year!"

I dared not laugh as he told me this true story.
When his Mother was about 8 months pregnant with him, some people said she could have been a Birth-Control poster girl, skinny, pregnant, carrying two 24 packs of beer and a carton of cigerettes as she wadled along smoking like the chimney.
There's a Halloween costume for you!

[Haunting Copy]

All one can do in this world is keep trying - and not give up.

There *are* people out there who deserve kind treatment.

Sarah

[Jim Warfield]

Yes, I believe most people deserve kind treatment most of the time.
Running my house for all of these years taught me eons ago that EVERYBODY has value. Everybody has talent, special knowlege, worth.
I have helped many people, many strangers I will probably never see again, but in the back of my mind (where those chirping insects live rent free!) I think maybe my kindness set in motion something that one day might come back to help me if I have need of help.
We never really know where it ends...until the planet explodes, THEN we kn....

"KA-BOOOOM!"

[Haunting Copy]

. . . and all was silent . . .

click click clickety click

Damn roaches.